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Imagine this. It’s late. The Ryanair flight’s just landed. To cap a long journey, you’ve had to deal with officially the most ridiculous airport bus transfer in the world (yes Bratislava really is a record-breaker in this respect). You just want to get to your hotel. But actually, it’s not always as simple as that. The airport doesn’t always have enough taxis and you might not have the taxi numbers or, perhaps, object to being charged over twice the odds (20 Euros plus) a local would be for the ride from the airport to your hotel. There might be any number of other reasons, too, why you need directions to your chosen accommodation.

If you head straight ahead on Obchodná, cross over the wide, tram track-lined road directly ahead and make a beeline for the pretty street (Michalská) heading down between the strip club and the bank, you’re through the Old Town gate of Michalská Brana, in the heart of the Old Town and right by Skaritz. Hotel Marrol’s, Park Inn Danube and Radisson Blu Carlton are all within five minutes’ walk (just head down towards Hviesdoslavo Námestie and the Danube for these last three). For any of these bang-in-centre hotels, public transport to Postová followed by the five to ten minute walk through the Old Town is a great and atmospheric introduction to your time in Bratislava.

But for some of the other most popular hotels, things are slightly more complicated. Slightly only mind. There’s still not really a need to taxi it from the airport/bus station for any of the below either…

River Danube – Pleasant backdrop to Grand Hotel River Park or the Sheraton Hotel

Grand Hotel River Park

This hotel is west along the riverside by about 2.5 km from Most SNP, next to the River Park shopping centre. It’s not the worst walk in the world from the Old Town as it’s along the river, but with a big road right on the other side, you might also want to consider public transport. Take bus 61 to Tranavské Mýto, then tram 4 which takes you eventually down alongside the river, under Most SNP and along to Chatam Sófer stop (from the airport). OR take bus 93 (bound for Petržalka) to Zochova (on Staromestská) followed by bus 39 which takes you along the river to Chatham Sófer stop (from the station).

The Sheraton Bratislava is in the Eurovea Shopping Centre, following the happy theme of big hotels in the city centre locating themselves near shopping centres. Look out the window from the Grand Hotel River Park or Sheraton in Bratislava and your view will be the same (beautiful Danube flanked by modern otherwise modern but unspectacular shopping centre; difference being they’re on opposite sides of the Old Town). Anyway. Take bus 61 to Tranavské Mýto, then tram 4 to Šafarikovo Nám (from the airport) OR trolleybus 1 to Šafarikovo Nám with a change at Most SNP (from the station).

Bratislava’s Hotel West is, once more, independent, and as of this year not part of the Best Western chain (which means it’ll be getting reviewed on here real soon, although in Google it still comes up as a Best Western). It’s in a strange – if rather stunning – location: up in the woods of the Mestské Lesy by the Kamzik TV mast. This is the only hotel where you really might rule public transport out, just because it’s otherwise a bit of a walk through the woods – but it is possible – and very nice if you’re staying a few days and don’t always want to get a taxi. Take bus 61 to one stop beyond Račianske Mýto, Karpatská (coming from the airport) OR bus 61/74/502 one stop to Karpatská (coming from the station). Walk a few paces up Karpatská to change to Trolleybus 203 and take the bus to the end of the line. Then continue walking up the road from approximately 1.5km. Just head up if in doubt – it goes into the woods but don’t worry – eventually the road will divide, with the left branch curling up to Kamzik and the right branch going to the hotel. A taxi from the centre: about 7 Euros. A taxi from the airport: about 25 Euros.

The city’s Holiday Inn is in Ružinov. Bus 61 to Bajkalská, then bus 74 a few stops south to Mliekárenská (from the airport). Bus 61 or bus 74 to Tranavské Mýto then tram 9 to Slovanet from where you’ll have to walk a few hundred metres south on Bajkalská (from the train station)

Bratislava’s Airport Hotels

For the NHGate One and VI Hotel Chopin, the two out-of-centre airport/business hotels, take Bus 61 from the airport (5 minutes) OR train station (30 minutes) and get off at Avion Shopping Centre. See our post on Bratislava’s airport hotels for more.

A Footnote

I should add, by the way, that me mentioning these big hotels is by no means an absolute endorsement of them. Quite the contrary. With the exception of Austria Trend Hotel, Skaritz and Hotel Marrol’s, all of these hotels fall for me into the category of slightly samey international chain options, and as a rule quirky quintessential Slovakia-ness is what we like to wax lyrical about on this site! Moral of this post: save 20 Euros on the taxi from the airport and spend it on a good meal out for two (possible in Bratislava) or dirt-cheap beer.

If you want to say To Hell with this post, I’m getting a taxi, then a cross-town (across the Old Town that is) or train station to Old Town taxi ride is around 5 Euros, and from the airport to the Old town you’ll pay 15 to 20 Euros (more for the Best Western Hotel West and Kempinski Hotel River Park because they’re through the Old Town and out the other side).

After the confusion I have had myself over the years, I thought a few notes on Bratislava’s actually very good but initially flummoxing public transport system might come in handy. There is very little thorough info in English on the web so: voila. This post is about getting from Bratislava Airport, aka M. R. Štefánik Airport (which is the way nearly all Brits arrive) to the centre.

Arriving at Bratislava’s Airport

Slovakia does not have its own airline, meaning Ryanair has almost become the (bone-shakingly bumpy) substitute. Don’t worry though: most flights still land with almost zero fatality rate. There is a reason a lot of British visitors arrive by air other than simple logistics: Bratislava is connected to London Luton, London Stansted, Birmingham, Liverpool and Edinburgh – making the UK easily the most connected country to Slovakia by air. (NB – you can also fly from London to Košice and from London to Poprad in the High Tatras).

Once through customs, the arrivals hall, such as it is, ushers you straight ahead through the double doors and into the car park. Here, unless you miraculously have your own limo waiting for you (or a strategically placed friend waiting in a revving Skoda, for example), you have one of two options to get to your accommodation in the centre:

– Taxi

You will have no difficulty spotting the taxi rank immediately outside arrivals. The official price a Slovak pays to get from the airport to a destination within the city centre is between 8 and 10 Euros one-way. However, you are probably not Slovak (the chances of this, after all, on a worldwide scale, are limited) and you are coming from the airport. Prices to city centre destinations will vary between 15 Euros, if you bargain hard and the destination really is central, to 25 Euros, if the taxi driver thinks he can milk you for extra Euros and the destination is slightly beyond the centre, for example Koliba. Taxi drivers are, in my personal experience, relatively unlikely to speak much English (nothing against that – just sayin’). For taxi rides, it’s best to come armed with cash (two 10 Euro notes and change in 1 Euro coins would be ideal)

– Bus

For buses, walk across the taxi rank/pick-up/drop-off road (using the pedestrian crossing) to the second pavement. Turn right. Walk along (just where the happy chappy with the wheelie bag in the picture is going) until you see the bus stop for busses to all city destinations at the end of the pavement. There is a shelter, some ticket machines and several other anxious first-time visitors like yourself waiting there, along with the usual group of grimly determined locals (to be joined by a lot of exuberant teenagers just one stop later when you pass the nearby Avion Shopping Centre). A word about the ticket machines. They do not take credit cards, British pounds, American dollars, forints or indeed any other currency than Euros. So have some Euro change handy. For journeys of 15 minutes or less, press the button for the 0.70 Euro ticket. For journeys of 15 minutes up to one hour (into which category any journey to the city centre, including yours, will almost certainly fall) get the option for the 0.90 Euro ticket.

Remember that you must validate your bus ticket on-board for bus 61 and any Bratislava city public transport. If you don’t validate the ticket (you’ll see the little validation machines by the doors on the bus) your ticket will be essentially invalid and you can face a 50 Euro+ fine! OK. Now you are ready to get your bus.

Now, in the paragraph when I mentioned city destinations? That was a bit of an exaggeration because really there’s actually only four options by bus from Bratislava Airport:

1: The Bratislava to Vienna Express Bus

This bus, run by Slovaklines in conjunction with Eurolines, runs between Bratislava Airport and Vienna’s central train station, Vienna HBF. En route, it will stop in Bratislava at the bus station and then the train station, in the town of Hainburg just across the border in Austria (that’s where Slovaks go to do shopping because… no, no, that’s another article), at Vienna’s Schwechat Airport and then on to the centre of Vienna at Vienna HBF (Hauptbahnhof, the main central train station). Here is a link to the latest timetable for the route. The first bus is 8:30am from the airport; the last is 9:35pm (so for the late-night flights arriving from the UK this option won’t be possible; you’ll need to wait an hour for the last Blaguss service, below). Journey time to central Bratislava is 30 minutes and to central Vienna one hour 30 minutes (three services stop at Erdbergstrasse, which is 1:10, but to Vienna HBF it’s 1:30). The full journey from Bratislava to central Vienna costs 7.50 Euros (luggage is 1 Euro extra). If you’re headed to the city centre, you can take this option too but there is little point as Bus 61 below is cheaper and more frequent. There are 7 services between Bratislava Airport and central Vienna daily.

2: Blaguss to Vienna

This service offers almost exactly the same route as the Slovaklines Bratislava-Vienna bus above: only with even fewer stops (and also 7.50 Euros to central Vienna). This service just calls at the airport, Most SNP bus station, Petržalka Einsteinova, Vienna’s Schwechat Airport and central Vienna’s Erdbergstrasse. Here’s a link to the latest timetable for the route. The first bus is an incredible 4am from Bratislava Airport, the last is 22:45. Bratislava airport-central Vienna travel time is billed as one hour 15 minutes although in reality this can take a little longer. There are 14 services between Bratislava Airport and central Vienna daily.

3: Bus No 61

This Bratislava city bus links the airport (signposted only as “letisko” in Bratislava) with the train station and runs up until at least midnight. This bus runs every 15 minutes but can get crowded. Try and get a seat (at the airport you should be able to) and keep your luggage in sight. The following stop (in Slovak: zastávka) will be announced on a very futuristic talking scoreboard (wo, yeah!) The stop of interest you will need to watch out for is Račianske Mýto (the name translates as Rača tollway because in times gone by this would have demarcated the edge of Bratislava and Rača (now a suburb) would have been a separate settlement). Get off at Račianske Mýto to change for connections to the city centre. Otherwise this bus continues to, you’ve guessed it, the train station (Hlavná Stanica).

From where the bus drops you on the far side of Račianske Mýto*, you have to double half-way back across the main road to the tram line to catch the tram to the city centre. You’ll see which way the trams are heading and you want those that are heading right (as you stand with your back to the terrible-looking restaurant and the park, facing the way you’ve come) to take you direct into the city centre. Getting tram number 5 is best (although tram 3 will also take you to the centre). After three stops on tram 5 (trams every 10 min or so, your ticket you got at the airport still covers you) you’ll enter the pedestrianised Obchodná street. Get off at the second stop on this street (so four after Račianske Mýto) at the stop called Postová for destinations in the Old Town centre. At Postová, continue to the next big crossroads (a beautiful church known as Kostol Nasvätejšej Trojice is now on your right) and straight across the tram lines is the very pretty entrance to Bratislava Old Town.

*You can get off Bus 61 earlier than Račianske Mýto, at Trnavské Mýto, and change for tram 4, which will bring you down into the centre by the Danube and the bridge across it of Most SNP (aka the UFO and it really does look like one). However, it’s slightly more complicated to give directions from Trnavské Mýto so Englishmaninslovakia recommends Račianske Mýto to change at…

4: Bus 96 to Petržalka

You are very unlikely to need the bus out to Petržalka (more, much more on Petržalka in other forthcoming posts, including the lovely cycle ride from Petržalka to Danubiana Art Museum or the new tram line that’s set to connect Petržalka with the city centre by 2016) when you first arrive in Bratislava but there is that option too.

Right. You’ve arrived. Thank Goodness for that.

RELATED POST:Every other public transport connection in Bratislava you are ever likely to need

After the confusion I have had myself over the years, I thought a few notes on Bratislava’s actually very good but initially flummoxing public transport system might come in handy. There is very little thorough info in English on the web so: voila. This first post is about getting from the airport (which is the way nearly all Brits arrive) to the centre.

Arriving at Bratislava’s Airport

Slovakia does not have its own airline, meaning Ryanair has almost become the (bone-shakingly bumpy) substitute. Don’t worry though: most flights still land with almost zero fatality rate. There is a reason a lot of British visitors arrive by air other than simple logistics: Bratislava is connected to London Luton, London Stansted, Birmingham, Liverpool and Edinburgh – making the UK easily the most connected country to Slovakia by air. (NB – you can also fly from London to Košice and from London to Poprad in the High Tatras).

Once through customs, the arrivals hall, such as it is, ushers you straight ahead through the double doors and into the car park. Here, unless you miraculously have your own limo waiting for you (or a strategically placed friend waiting in a revving Skoda, for example), you have one of two options to get to your accommodation in the centre:

– Taxi

You will have no difficulty spotting the taxi rank immediately outside arrivals. The official price a Slovak pays to get from the airport to a destination within the city centre is between 8 and 10 Euros one-way. However, you are probably not Slovak (the chances of this, after all, on a worldwide scale, are limited) and you are coming from the airport. Prices to city centre destinations will vary between 15 Euros, if you bargain hard and the destination really is central, to 25 Euros, if the taxi driver thinks he can milk you for extra Euros and the destination is slightly beyond the centre, for example Koliba. Taxi drivers are, in my personal experience, relatively unlikely to speak much English (nothing against that – just sayin’). For taxi rides, it’s best to come armed with cash (two 10 Euro notes and change in 1 Euro coins would be ideal)

– Bus

For buses, walk across the taxi rank/pick-up/drop-off road (using the pedestrian crossing) to the second pavement. Turn right. Walk along (just where the happy chappy with the wheelie bag in the picture is going) until you see the bus stop for busses to all city destinations at the end of the pavement. There is a shelter, some ticket machines and several other anxious first-time visitors like yourself waiting there, along with the usual group of grimly determined locals (to be joined by a lot of exuberant teenagers just one stop later when you pass the nearby Avion Shopping Centre). A word about the ticket machines. They do not take credit cards, British pounds, American dollars, forints or indeed any other currency than Euros. So have some Euro change handy. For journeys of 15 minutes or less, press the button for the 0.70 Euro ticket. For journeys of 15 minutes up to one hour (into which category any journey to the city centre, including yours, will almost certainly fall) get the option for the 0.90 Euro ticket.

Remember that you must validate your bus ticket on-board for bus 61 and any Bratislava city public transport. If you don’t validate the ticket (you’ll see the little validation machines by the doors on the bus) your ticket will be essentially invalid and you can face a 50 Euro fine! OK. Now you are ready to get your bus.

Now, in the paragraph when I mentioned city destinations? That was a bit of an exaggeration because really there’s actually only four options by bus from Bratislava Airport:

1: The Bratislava to Vienna Express Bus

This bus, run by Slovaklines in conjunction with Eurolines, runs between Bratislava Airport and Vienna’s Sudtiroler Platz. En route, it will stop in Bratislava at the bus station and then the train station, in the town of Hainburg just across the border in Austria (that’s where Slovaks go to do shopping because… no, no, that’s another blog post), at Vienna’s Schwechat Airport and then on to the centre of Vienna at Sudtiroler Platz. Here is a link to the latest timetable for the route. The first bus is 8:30am from the airport; the last is 9:35pm (so for the late-night flights arriving from the UK this option won’t be possible; you’ll need to wait an hour for the last Blaguss service, below). Journey time to central Bratislava is 30 minutes and to central Vienna one hour 35-one hour 55 minutes (three services stop at Erdbergstrasse, which is 1:35, but to Sudtiroler Platz it’s 1:55). The full journey from Bratislava to central Vienna costs 7.70 Euros (luggage is 1 Euro extra). If you’re headed to the city centre, you can take this option too but there is little point as Bus 61 below is cheaper and more frequent.

2: Blaguss to Vienna

This service offers almost exactly the same route as the Slovaklines Bratislava-Vienna bus above: only with even fewer stops (perhaps why they charge a hefty 2 Euros more: 10 Euros to central Vienna). This service just calls at the airport, Most SNP bus station, Petržalka Einsteinova, Vienna’s Schwechat Airport and central Vienna’s Erdbergstrasse. Here’s a link to the latest timetable for the route. The first bus is an incredible 4am from Bratislava Airport, the last is 22:45. Bratislava airport-central Vienna travel time is billed as one hour 15 minutes although in reality this can take a little longer.

3: Bus No 61

This Bratislava city bus links the airport (signposted only as “letisko” in Bratislava) with the train station and runs up until at least midnight. This bus runs every 15 minutes but can get crowded. Try and get a seat (at the airport you should be able to) and keep your luggage in sight. The following stop (in Slovak: zastávka) will be announced on a very futuristic talking scoreboard (wo, yeah!) The stop of interest you will need to watch out for is Račianske Mýto (the name translates as Rača tollway because in times gone by this would have demarcated the edge of Bratislava and Rača, where I live (now a suburb) would have been a separate settlement). Get off at Račianske Mýto to change for connections to the city centre. Otherwise this bus continues to, you’ve guessed it, the train station (Hlavná Stanica).

From where the bus drops you on the far side of Račianske Mýto*, you have to double half-way back across the main road to the tram line to catch the tram to the city centre. You’ll see which way the trams are heading and you want those that are heading right (as you stand with your back to the terrible-looking restaurant and the park, facing the way you’ve come) to take you direct into the city centre. Getting tram number 5 is best (although tram 3 will also take you to the centre). After three stops on tram 5 (trams every 10 min or so, your ticket you got at the airport still covers you) you’ll enter the pedestrianised Obchodná street. Get off at the second stop on this street (so four after Račianske Mýto) at the stop called Postová for destinations in the Old Town centre. At Postová, continue to the next big crossroads (a beautiful church known as Kostol Nasvätejšej Trojice is now on your right) and straight across the tram lines is the very pretty entrance to Bratislava Old Town.

*You can get off Bus 61 earlier than Račianske Mýto, at Trnavské Mýto, and change for tram 4, which will bring you down into the centre by the Danube and the bridge across it of Most SNP (aka the UFO and it really does look like one). However, it’s slightly more complicated to give directions from Trnavské Mýto so Englishmaninslovakia recommends Račianske Mýto to change at…

4: Bus 96 to Petržalka

You are very unlikely to need the bus out to Petržalka (more, much more on Petržalka in other forthcoming posts, including the lovely cycle ride from Petržalka to Danubiana Art Museum or the new tram line that’s set to connect Petržalka with the city centre) when you first arrive in Bratislava but there is that option too.

I’m always a bit dubious of cafes in, or affiliated with, bookstores. So it was with some trepidation that I snuffed out Café Dias the other night after a spot of Christmas shopping. Would it be another dreary collaboration of the Borders-Starbucks or Paperchase-Caffé Nero ilk, full of depressed, angry people so utterly out of keeping with what a bookish cafe should be like?

Not a bit of it. Café Dias might rather grandly advertise itself as a place where “Great Adventures Live Forever” but in the waste ground of good, welcoming places to eat/drink at this end of town between Obchodná and Hodžovo Námestie, it’s a nice find.

Not that locals think of it as a “find” – Panta Rhei, the bookstore adjoining the cafe, is hardly a secret. It’s a massive bookstore. It is a way above-average bookstore, actually, with a really great selection, American Christmas classics on repeat right now and my favourite bit: a wonderful craft and design section of the DIY variety. They also have a decent selection of cards (in a country where card-giving is not the standard practice it is in the UK) and gorgeous notebooks (I love browsing various shops’ notebook selections).

But back to the cafe. No one would ever think Dias would be so good, being surrounded by that fierce, vigorous brand of commerce which can all too often turn outlets into piles of direness. Yet there it is: cosy, tribal-themed décor, big wide windows from which to spectate on the scurrying passers-by heading to the Billa supermarket in the snow (currently a sweet old 15cm deep), and, of course the most important, innovative food and drink.

Café Dias Food and Drink

After a careful scrutiny of the cake section (there was fruity cheesecakes and a zesty apple tart which I also ended up trying), I opted for the chocolatiest option – chocolate sponge topped by a couple of layers of lighter, creamier chocolate mouse and a fruity dark chic topping (I like chocolate) and a mulled wine. The only problem with this was that I didn’t sample the coffee, which a friend had recommended me as excellent – the same one as introduced me to the now lamentably-closed Prešporák actually but I can’t reveal my sources – but I did smell it, and it smelt good. What Dias has is a selection of plantation brews from the likes of Guatemala, Indonesia, Peru and the rest of the world’s coffee kingdoms-on-high – and each one comes with a tempting description and general tips on appreciating coffee: for a reasonable 2 to 5.35 euros.

The service was, well, courteous but on the slow side. I had to beg to be allowed to pay the bill. As I was waiting, I found out that the cafe takes its name from Portuguese explorer Bartholemeu Dias, the first-known man to sail round the coast of Africa. Café Dias might not quite take you to a place as strange and new as that. But in an absence of other enticing eateries in this neck of the woods, its well worth the voyage here (and the wait for the table).

It should be noted that the Café Dias-Panta Rhei double act is not unique to this part of the city centre. Elsewhere in Bratislava, in the big shopping centres of Aurpark and Avion, as well as in other city shopping centres in the likes of Piešťany, Nitra, Žilina and Košice, a Panta Rhei along with a Café Dias sitting plumb in the corner of it, will be found. But these are shopping centres. And whilst they seem pretty popular places to eat in Slovakia, they are vacuums as far as atmosphere goes. This store – call it the flagship Café Dias-Panta Rhei combo – is a bit different. It has personality. A more-or-less guaranteed delightful book- or stationery purchase. And great people-watching ops whilst you peruse afore-mentioned purchase over that coffee and cake…

An adventure that lasts forever? A pleasant diversion from the daily grind that seems set to stay a fixture in Bratislava’s Old Town, for sure…

LOCATION: – Vysoká 2, by (indeed, on the ground floor of) the Austria Trend Hotel (seen on the map), and attached to Panta Rhei. It’s right outside the other side of the underpass when you’re coming from Hodžovo Nam.

OPENING: – 8am-10pm

BEST TIME TO VISIT: – Late morning or early lunch, for a good coffee and cake after a book purchase.